Since I've moved back to the States (yay! decent-ish TV!) I've been watching "Say Yes to the Dress" reruns on TLC. As much as I would love to be able to buy one of those dresses there is absolutely no way I'd be willing to drop a thousand dollars on a dress that I will wear once, let alone three thousand plus. And those that do have a lower end budget (for this particular show that usually goes from $1000 to $3500) the dresses that are in their price range are rather plain.
But I realize that those shows are filmed in high-end boutiques. Something that I'm obviously not going to be able to afford. So I have a few options. I could (a) buy a dress at a discount store, (b) find a used dress and get it fitted (which would probably set me back quite a bit), (c) rent a dress, or (d) make my own. Or I could enter one of those contests on major wedding sites like The Knot or enter a drawing at a wedding convention. But I don't have much luck and it wouldn't be very likely that I'd win anything, let alone something as major as a wedding dress.
Honestly, I'm leaning toward making my own dress for several reasons. It would be exactly what I want and need for any of the tiers. I could personalize it. I could skimp on the fabrics and embellishments. It would fit me and I wouldn't have to spend hundreds of dollars to have it altered. Not to mention the bragging rights I would earn!
I realize, however, that there are downsides to making my own wedding dress as well. It probably won't be as nice as a dress made by someone who does this sort of thing all the time. I have very little experience when it comes to dress making! It would take quite a long time and a lot of effort to make. And fabric is not cheap. It would also be difficult to keep it hidden from J- and there would be no guarantee that I would be able to finish it on time.
In the end I know it's a gamble, but I think the payoff would be really great. Not to mention J- supports me on the decision. I'll talk about my designs for the dress(es) in another post.
As for the groom's attire, I think we're going to keep it pretty basic: slacks, button-down shirt rolled to the elbow, dress shoes, vest, tie. The major thing is going to be color. I feel that a dark brown for the slacks, shoes, and vest, a light blue (the groom's favorite color) tie, and a cream button-down shirt go best with the color scheme we've chosen. However, J- doesn't think that he'll like a dark brown color and instead wants to try a gray. I've managed to talk him into trying something a little lighter on the brown scale. But since we haven't actually had him try anything on yet, we'll save that battle for another day. Here are a couple of pictures to illustrate the look we want for J-.
This is the dark brown that I want for the men of the wedding party. For J- the shirt would be cream or ivory, the tie would be plain, silk, and light blue. I've even thought that adding some light blue embroidered stripes to the vest might be nice. As a concession to the heat the shirt sleeves would be rolled to the elbow.
This is what J- wants for the men of the wedding party. He wouldn't mind the outfit so much if it was gray
After hearing his objections I looked for something other than the dark brown. I showed him a couple of tan/lighter colors and he seemed to dislike them a little less.
When it comes time to decide he has promised to try on even the dark brown, so we'll see what happens. As for how we're going to go about getting J-'s outfit, we have similar options to the ones for getting the wedding dress. At least he'd be more likely to be able to use the pieces from his outfit for work or other special occasions.
Disclaimer: None of the pictures in this post are mine. The dark brown vest picture is from Autumn Jenson's Suits & Stuff board on Pinterest. The gray outfit picture is from The Frugal Fiance, a fellow blogspot.com blog. (http://duffylinn.blogspot.jp/) The tan vest picture comes from the groom's board on weddingbee.com.
